Beyond EA

Contributed by: Thomas Gregg

As we all can see maturity in the Enterprise Architecture teams increases rapidly. While talking to existing customers and especially prospects I recognize that almost all of them are TOGAF trained or even certified and have a good understanding of what Enterprise Architecture is and what values it can deliver. I especially want to emphasize the “can” because real results are still hard to present within most of the organizations.

But why is it the case that most of the Enterprise Architects still see themselves on the technical side of the world closer to Solution Design than to the Business?

Doing classical Enterprise Architecture as a siloed exercise can be quite tricky and the benefits are very hard to sell within an organization.

The time has come to link the Enterprise Architecture teams more closely to Demand and Portfolio Management processes within the organization to fully leverage the benefits these teams deliver. This will allow the Architects to become more of a partner to the business than the current role of a teacher they play – telling them that some things can’t be done this way.

Therefore organizations need to put more effort in implementing strong Governance processes managing the linkages between Demand Management and Program Portfolio Management so that Enterprise Architecture Management becomes a fundamental part of these disciplines.

This will allow the Enterprise Architecture teams to show architectural inconsistencies across demands e.g. because there are several organizations requesting a similar system. In addition to that Program Portfolios could not only be prioritized against budget and strategy contribution but also against architectural implications.

Lets’s go a step forward…